About the displaced, again.

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly as part of his collective memory series

Remember Farid Boustany? (here) Well, here's the idea - a Chouf district MP had his ads on the Jounieh highway in Kesserwan. Which does not make sense. Except it does. You see when the Mountain war happened - one of the many sub wars of the Lebanese war (here) there were many displaced people/families who populated the Kesserwan region. And despite repatriations and people rebuilding houses here, in the end, they remained in Kesserwan and bought properties here. 

Which brings us to the refugees. One of the things about people in the south is how attached they are to their land. As soon as hostilities end people go back in droves (here). Now the major question is - what is there to go back to? Who will go back? If you look at maps, this is the same carbon copy of the Gaza scenario. Do note, I am not trying to be a third rate expert in geopolitics am just trying to read things as is.

Interestingly, and to draw a parallel with the Syrians, many - as in the hundreds of thousands - have gone back to their country. Or to be more specific, we are almost back to the pre-Syrian war phase (almost, again): the men remain here and families go back to Syria. Sure, just take my village, many women and children remain here, but on the whole the pressure has eased considerably. 

Now, not to stir the pot or anything, but the people who fled the Chouf at the time were Christians - specifically Maronites - who came to other Maronite areas (Kesserwan as an example). The people who got displaced from the south are by and large Shiites. Which "area" will take them in remains to be seen. Also, and again not to stir the pot, I do live in a Maronite village myself but now the sight of a veiled woman or rented houses with blackened windows is also nothing new.

I am not even sure if this is a sign of progress or pragmatism. The woman who - during the war - was a staunch supporter of the extreme right militia of the Lebanese Forces has rented her downstairs apartment to a Syrian family. And yes, they are Muslim. So now what? To be honest I have no idea what this means or where this is leading us to.

And now what do we do with all the refugees, again....

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

And so now war is on doorstep, again (and again, and again...). If anyone remembers 2024 it is when - well, everyone - allowed the refugees to take shelter, or if not, to give them as much warmth and comfort as possible. Not to brag, but anything I could lay my hand on and I was able to donate went to a family who had to leave their house twice - funny thing is that they knew exactly what the donation was and still came with a car too small to load them (go figure!).

And still, the outpouring of sympathy was real, genuine and truly needed. Which brings us to today. And the fact there were missiles sent from Lebanon to "avenge" the death of Iranian supreme leader Khamenei. That people starting coming in drove to all other regions clogging the highways at all hours of the night is only normal. But the question is, what do we do with them now?

Everything that could be donated was already donated, people are truly struggling to make sense of the economy, the country has 50% of its population below poverty level (never mind the photos you see about people partying on Instagram, these are the exception that proves the rule), everyone is literally struggling to make a living, and now this. 

The same influx of people, the same people as a matter of fact, they will go back and knock on all the doors they already knocked on in 2024. Mind you, municipalities are issuing orders so that anyone who has housed or rented to refugees needs to basically report the name, phone number, and number of people in question to the municipality.

I suppose what happened with the Syrians almost bringing the system to a break was lesson enough for all municipalities (at this point, though, we are going back to a pre-situation where only the "men" stay here but wives and children are being brought back to Syria, I know so as too many families now went back while just the head of the household remained in Lebanon).

But the question remains the same. What do we do with those now that the bottom of the barrel has been scrapped clean. When everything that could have been donated was donated out of kindness, solidarity and altruism.

Undo the damage. A look at the (Syrian) refugees

At this point, I have crossed the 100th Syrian refugee family asking to rent the upper floor of my house. My answer from the get-go was no. I can already see your judgement - you are "racist" (even if Syrians are not a race). OK you are "xenophobic" - and guess what? I am not. Here's my logic, the upper floor contains furniture from three different houses (dismantled beds, 3 sofas, 1 salon, 2 dining room tables with their chairs, 1 living room apart from the knick-knacks (mattresses etc...)). So, what do I do with those?

Long story short it is easy to jump to judgement when one does not know the story. Thing is, what if you twist the facts and rearrange them so that they tell the story you want? Welcome to "undo the damage before it's too late" - a campaign against Syrian refugees.

First let me tell you a story: In 2022, during the parliament elections Farid Boustani, who was campaigning for a seat in the Chouf area plastered his message in Kesserwan. What? But the logic is simple: During the war many, many, people from the Chouf area got displaced, a lot of them eventually ended up in Kesserwan (to be clear the displaced people were Christian), and despite the whole surge of rebuilding their houses in the villages they left, basically they remained in the areas they migrated to - using the Chouf houses are some sort of weekend/summer escape. 

Statistics clearly indicate that 90% of displaced people never go back home. Worse? What if they have nothing to go back to? Our immediate neighbor who is renting the house below mine had 2 restaurants and 2 houses. He lost all of them. He is now employed at a very famous restaurant in Lebanon as a chef. He is trying to build a new life knowing that back "home" there is nothing.

What about those required to serve in the Syrian army, want it or not? As soon as they cross back the border, they are wanted again. I know, I know, this is a simplistic argument but this does not mean that the original statistics used by the "stop the damage" campaign are correct (example, they claim that refugees are 40% of all Lebanese inhabitants whereas the correct number is 15%, the use photos taken from Turkey claiming they are in Lebanon etc...).

Whereas I claim no easy answer, when one goes back to what happened in Lebanon - that a major fragment of the population became displaced, one can only sympathize. But perhaps sympathy is selective.

The current Ukrainian crisis showed that some refugees are more equal than others

Source: The Art Of Boo

Moustafa Byoumi wrote a brilliant article in The Guardian lately (please read here) whereby he detailed how "racist" the coverage of Ukraine is. Of course, by now, many of us are familiar with CBS News foreign correspondent Charlie D'Agata masterpiece of journalism when he uttered live on air (about Ukraine), that it "isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen" - now of course, when Mesopotamia was a civilization, I am not sure what the rest of the world was.

Let me give you this other story, when trying to save almost extinct species, human beings - when interviewed - wanted to allocate more money towards species with anthropomorphic features. Anthropomorphism is that quality where the animal species has much more "resemblance" to the humans. And even the title of this post is a paraphrasing of George Orwell's "all animals are equal, some more equal than others". I am not directly comparing almost extinct animal species to refugees, but sadly the comparison does stand on the ground.

I have previously detailed the one-sided love between Lebanon and France (please look here). But this is just a small example of how hard it is for a Lebanese to get a visa to Europe. Lebanon has hosted, per capita, the highest amount of Syrian refugees in the world. When Europe was squabbling about a thousand here and there, we had more than 2 million (the latest figures still indicate 1.5 million if you want to know). Even inside Lebanon, the Damour massacre has displaced so many people who still did not go back to their original villages. 

Actually, Christian Lebanese always had this fallacy in their head, that Europe wants them. It would welcome them with open arms. But of course, these are the same people who never tried to apply to a Schengen visa - last time I did it took 60 papers. 60. Papers. I can tell you stories about how embassies treated me (at the time I was teaching at a university, with two full passports filled with stamps and visas and still, they made it incredibly hard to get the visa. Small example: I asked (backed by papers) to get a multiple entry visa. I got one. For how long? 4 weeks! When did finish? One day before Christmas! So it was impossible to actually spend the holidays in Europe even if then I was loaded with money).

But all this to tell you, no - as Lebanese, Syrians, Afghans we are not so welcome to Europe. Of course, just to be clear, considering I grew up in a war, all these sights from Ukraine bother me immensely (and yes, they trigger flashbacks for me). But whereas the whole world rallies around Ukraine (and rightfully so), when all this was happening in Palestine, no one moved a muscle.

Daniel Hannan in The Telegraph put it as succinctly as possible when talking about Ukrainians, "(they) watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts" - you hear that Lebanese "influencers"?

On that road to Jerusalem that goes through Jounieh

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

Is there a way to simplify a complicated chequered issue? No there is not.
I personally know the man who used to go to Yasser Arafat and take cash from him in Samsonite bags to fund a local well-known newspaper.
Now that the deal of the century has been announced, to sympathize with the Palestinians is a problem. Not to sympathize with them is another.
How so?
Well, to begin with they made no qualms about wanting Lebanon as an alternative country, and the reason the whole black September happened in Jordan which lead the PLO to be evacuated from there was to stop them from getting Jordan as a supposed alterative country (and here I am divulging two info I got from incredibly well placed person in Jordan: Yasser Arafat was evacuated by wearing a woman's dress and plans for a printed currency and re-allocation of houses in Jordan to Palestinians were already set).
Which brings us back to the expression: "The road to Jerusalem goes through Jounieh" as uttered by Arafat. To begin with, with Jounieh being a northern suburb of Beirut, this is a geographical impossibility - since Jerusalem is to the South. But this implied that they wanted Lebanon - all of it - in lieu of Palestine.
Now here's the flip of the equation: Palestinians have been put in camps in Lebanon ever since the nakba of 1948. Have you visited such a camp? I have. I am - by all means and standards a very thin individual. Yet even I had to walk through certain passages sideways to minmize my body size so small these passages have been. There are areas there which never ever saw the sun and are incredibly humid and damp. Palestinians are not allowed by law to perform many many jobs in Lebanon - the rationale being that they would "settle" if they do. Remember they are here on temporary basis supposedly - all this without remembering that due to shady Lebanese politics, only Christian Palestinians were given Lebanese idendities and were nationalized in a bid to increase the Christian fragment of the population.
As I said there is no way to minimize a very complex issue. And anyone who can tell you where things are going or that there is a gigantic conspiracy theory is in my book, a liar. If history has taught us anything, it's that we have no clue where things are going.
Syrian refugees, may I remind you, are also supposed to be here on temporary basis, just like the Palestinians. All while Lebanese are drowning in their own financial/economic/political problems.
I am not trying to simplify a complex issue, but again - sympathizing with the Palestinians is a problem, not sympathing is another.